Highlights: The product development methodology aims to assist the planning and design of the product throughout its life cycle. Using selection criteria it is possible to choose a solution will be followed until the end of the development process and this process is known as optimization of product solutions. Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) is an approach that allows selecting a product solution with better manufacturing and assembly performance. Computational modeling allows representing systems in virtual environment in order to reproduce its characteristics and to compare scenarios through simulation.
Goal: The objective of this work was to apply the computer simulation to compare the productive performance, according to production times, productivity and resource utilization rate, of three solutions proposed for a raincoat for pets with thermal protection.
Methodology: Initially, conceptual models representing the production systems for the three product solutions were generated. The systems were modeled in discrete event simulation software, enabling different scenarios testing, resulting in production performance indicators for each product solution.
Results: The analysis of the performance indicators allow identifying that the third solution proposed for the product obtained the best productive performance in all proposed scenarios; therefore, it was chosen as the best solution for the product according to the DFMA approach.
Limitations of the investigation: The application of the methodology indicated in this work was limited to the study of a single productive system of a specific product.
Practical implications: This work presents a practical application of computer simulation tools applied to product development.
Originality / Value: The original contribution of this work is the application of computational simulation of production systems in product development following the DFMA approach.
In 2016, the Brazilian pet industry had revenue of R$ 18.9 billion and ranked third place worldwide. Thus, it is a sector that is always looking for enhancements in its productivity levels. Based on the previous statements, a case study was conducted in a selected company of the pet care business, with the goal to augment its monthly revenue, identify the bottleneck that impedes reaching this goal, and proposed solutions to bring the production and loading fluxes of merchandise to its optimal state, making the company's revenue also optimal. The classical tools of the theory of constraints were used in this analysis. The first step was to obtain the undesirable effects of the process to define the bottleneck. After that, some injections were proposed as solutions to eliminate the undesirable effects and bring the production and loading model of the company to its full state. Finally, by means of a computational tool, the current situation of the company (with the bottleneck), and the situation in a virtual state (without the bottleneck) were simulated and compared, showing the potential of the found solution.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.